An elderly woman in hat, gloves and wellington boots sat on the white coral beach. Grounded by the bad weather, she sifted through mounds of multicoloured seaweed that had been washed up around her, piling brown, viscous strands into her wicker basket. This is what she did in bad weather, she said: collect seaweed to export to Japan. Behind her, a grey sea raged. Had it not been so rough, she would have been out there, diving.

She was one of the Haenyeo, the "sea women" who earn their living by diving for shellfish off the rocky shores of Udo island, armed only with a basket, flippers and knife. As the young opt for less arduous careers, diving is left to the oldergeneration.

Hoping to catch some Haenyeo braving the elements, we skirted the tiny island, dodging sheets of seaweed and garlic left to dry on the single narrow road, and screeched to a halt by a tell-tale pile of plastic sandals. In the distance, a dozen coloured buoys bobbed in the water. We clambered over the sharp rocks, and waited for what seemed an eternity. "There!" cried my guide, Jeoung Sook, pointing excitedly. But I could hear them before my eyes focused. They emitted an eerie whistling sound as they exhaled, rising one by one to the surface until there was a head alongside each buoy. A few moments laughter and chat, and they were gone again, 7m down, in a flurry of flippers. It was more than three minutes before the first resurfaced, clutching her shells, whistling. And this they do for hours on end.

Both a geographical and cultural halfway house between China and Japan, Korea is proud of her traditions. Statues to the valiant Haenyeo are raised all around Udo. Throughout Korea, you find "folk villages" whose name may smack unappetisingly of Disneyland, but six of which are, in fact, authentic villages that have been sensitively restored to preserve traditional lifestyles. Cultural value attaches not only to inanimate artefacts and buildings, but also to treasured songs, ceremonies and people, the latter termed, "Intangible Cultural Properties".

For the tourist, Korea holds two trump cards: her natural beauty, and the cultural relics of her dynastic and religious heritage. Three, if you count the food. And although there is a brisk trade in internal tourism, I seemed to be the only foreigner there to enjoy it.

Subtropical Jeju is a good place to start. It is Korea's largest and most famous island, the result of a volcanic eruption, a place of dramatic waterfalls and crystalline formations of black basalt plunging into turquoise seas.

Not for nothing is it known as Honeymoon Island. We would follow scores of identically clad newlyweds on trails to assorted craters, long low walls of lava stone snaking through the velvety grass like ribbons of black lace. At the summit of Sunrise Peak - at any time of day, the most impressive of these craters - they would pose for the camera on the surrounding crown of rock, oblivious to the murderous drop behind them.

From the heights, we plunged to the depths, and into the underground lava tubes. At 6,976m, Manjanggul is the longest in the world - dank, dripping but well-lit, and with no sign of the bats and spiders promised by the guidebooks. It was a relief, after all this unaccustomed exercise, to pause for a lunch of cuttlefish soup and sea urchins, reaped by the Haenyeo, before a siesta on the white sands beneath the luxurious Silla hotel.

Back on the mainland in Gyeongju, Queen Seondeok's seventh-century astronomical observatory is shaped like a bottle 9.4m high. Based on 12 foundation blocks, it is said to have been made of 365 stones. It stands opposite Tumuli Park, named after the 20 or so mounds, the tombs of kings, dating back to the first century AD. As these were excavated only 30 years ago (and most tombs remain unopened), they escaped the depredations of the Japanese, so that their treasures of gold and jade are now displayed in the national museum.

Elsewhere throughout the country, the legend found on monuments: "Destroyed by the Japanese in 1593 and reconstructed ..." or "Destroyed by the Japanese in 1915 ..." make a depressing mantra, and go some way to explaining relations between the two countries.

But the best sites are to be found up in the mountains, where Buddhist monks cannily selected the most scenic spots for their temples. The Seokguram grotto is an eighth-century man-made cave housing a white granite Sakyamuni Buddha, considered one of the most perfect of its kind in the world, one lost to the world until a postman, seeking shelter from a storm, chanced upon the grotto in 1909.

From here, a 3km walk leads down to Bulguk-sa temple, originally built in 528AD ("destroyed by the Japanese in 1593 and rebuilt in the Joseon dynasty"). The complex, ascending to heaven over the traditional three levels, sits among pine, cherry and cedar trees, beneath the benevolent gaze of Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva of Perfect Compassion.

As one of Buddhism's most important shrines, it attracts huge crowds. Otherworldly detachment is difficult in the circumstances, and it was not until we got lost on the slopes of Mount Namsan that I found the tranquillity I had hoped for.

A thousand years ago, there were 800 temples scattered throughout the mountain's valleys. Today, 100 sites are left, along with dozens of Buddha statues and pagodas. As we rambled along the steep, narrow paths, the only sounds were of birdsong and waterfalls. We saw hardly a soul, just an old woman, sweeping away pine needles at the site of a former temple. In the middle of overgrown nowhere, we chanced upon a homely Buddha carved into a niche. More than 1,300 years old, it is known as the Granny Buddha.

If Buddhism remains the beating heart of the country, Confucianism, the twin pillar of Korean culture, has fared less well. Of the 600 Confucian academies that existed until the 19th century, only 47 now survive. Of these, Tosan Seowon, founded in 1557 and now a museum, hides among a luscious coun tryside of orchards and rice paddies. It was renowned for producing scholars and high-ranking civil servants during the period of the aristocrat-intellectual, the yangban, many of whom lived around Andong. Their descendants can occasionally be seen there in traditional hanbok, along with a wispy beard and black horsehair hat.

Andong provides the ideal opportunity to swap an uninspiring hotel for a night in a traditional yangban family mansion. Raised on stone blocks containing the ondol underfloor heating system, the wood-framed houses have tiled concave roofs, rice-paper windows and sliding doors.

Don't expect doors that lock, en suite bathrooms or much by way of furniture. And never wear shoes indoors (my own inadvertent faux pas resulted in an embarrassing frenzy of floor-scrubbing). As for the bruises incurred from eating cross-legged at low tables and sleeping on the floor with a charcoal log for a pillow - that is all part of the experience.

At the nearby Yangdong Folk Village, 160 houses proliferate in a bucolic heaven, cascading down the hilly slopes. In the courtyard of Seobaekdang mansion, we found the owner sitting beneath "Natural Monument No. 8": a 540-year-old Chinese juniper tree. "My husband's ancestors built this house in 1454," she told us, "on an auspicious site chosen by a geomancer." The years have been less kind to other houses. At Hyangdan manor, the windows are ripped and wild flowers carpet the living room, watered by the heavens, while a letter pokes from its mail box, awaiting an owner who will not return.

Soon I was to return to Seoul and to the 21st century, with its legacy of razor wire, demilitarised zones, military checkpoints, minefields and invasion tunnels. That, too, is on the tourist agenda ("Experience the pain of a divided country!"). And I would see films about the events that have torn the Korean peninsula in two. Sitting in a Yangdong courtyard, enjoying a dish of freshly-slaughtered chicken stuffed with jujube, garlic and life-enhancing ginseng, it was a reality impossible to imagine.